David Stevenson
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As to Brian’s comment on “Standard Jacoby” you might like to read my post on this subject in this forum in the post headed Jackoby (sic).
Having been brought up on DGRs before Jacoby or splinters were invented and having seen their development the biggest problem with DGRs is not, in my view, what was mentioned above. If the bidding goes 1S 2D 2N 4S then 4S is a DGR, no problem. If the bidding goes 1S 2D 2S 4S then it is not clear whether 4S is a DGR or not, but we used to believe, correctly in my view, that if opener can only rebid his own suit there is no slam opposite a DGR so it did not matter. The problem comes with the sequence 1S 2D 2H 4S. When I was young the rebid of 2H could have been on 4-4 in the majors so this was clearly a DGR. But as the game developed we started to play that a 2H rebid guaranteed five spades so now the sequence 1S 2D 2H 4S suggests game values and three spades. So how do you distinguish a DGR from this common hand? Since 2H is wide ranging there can easily be a slam and opener will be confused if this sequence could either show
QT94
A3
AQJ52
73
or
QT9
A43
QJ52
A86
One of the problems which creates a lot of discussion and even ill feeling in bridge is that very few conventions or agreements are played the same way by everyone. The EBU tells you not to use names when describing what you play. This is something that is rarely taught. You learn to play something some way or other and the danger is that you will assume that others are playing the same way as you do. Several problems submitted to my forum and to its predecessor on Mr Bridge’s BRIDGE magazine have come from this.
Jacoby is a typical example. If you play that with a raise to game in a major with four card support you bid 2N then you are playing Jacoby. But there are various continuations thereafter. So either if you are playing it or if your opponents say they are playing it you should not make assumptions as to the further bidding after 2N without discussing it with partner or asking your opponents in the two cases.
When you read a description in a magazine or book or elsewhere of a convention, an agreement or even a full system, it is incredibly rare for the writer to point out that not everybody plays it the way they say and you should always remember that other people may not.
For anyone who does not understand Brian’s comment on the news there is a player who with his regular partner cheated over a number of years in many top level events. He was finally convicted but CAS who seem to have little understanding of bridge overturned the conviction when he appealed. He is still banned in North America.
Surprisingly the Italians have picked him to play for the Italian team. This is considered unacceptable by at least a majority of the other teams. The retaliation is that so far the Italians have not played a match because the other teams have not turned up. At the last count that involved 22 of the other teams. The English Bridge Union have posted a comment in support of this action and the Swiss Bridge Federation have posted a comment in support of the English Bridge Union’s posting.
I am a great believer in the value of having different events and really like the number of them available to me in the UK. While I do like playing in the USA one disadvantage is that they have so few types of competition. In the case of these hybrid events perhaps the simple answer is that some people like hybrid events! If you really want to discuss it perhaps I should give you the eddress of the secretary of Deva BC since at this moment they are running live events and online events and hybrid events and you can see what they think.
Of course your extreme example might give a slightly unfair NGS rating but that is no different from a duplicate where you happen to only play the better players or otherwise even though there is a good mix of players that night. To cite Deva BC again, we played there last week and my partner commented the standard did not seem that high. I checked and there were seven really good pairs playing – and we had played none of them!
I wrote above “So the only excuse for staying out of it is if you are playing rather bridge when you are not comparing your score with anybody else!”. 🙂 This should of course read: “So the only excuse for staying out of it is if you are playing rubber bridge when you are not comparing your score with anybody else!”!
Whatever you think of the diamond suit, Bruce, you will often go off in 2N with the North hand if you try for game. As for the South hand, yes, isolated jacks are poor, though J9x is better than Jxx. So if you want to adjust for everything then you deduct a point for 4333 and a point for two J9x’s. But AQJ8 is notably better than 7 points – maybe 8 or 8.5, and AKT is far better than split aces and kings. So it is worth about 16 points. You will lose a lot at bridge if you downgrade a lot without upgrading for good features.
As far as legalities are concerned there is no problem with both playing the same hands, there is no problem with different ways of dealing with sitouts, there is no problem with different lengths of session so long as the EBU’s 70% rule is followed.
As far as Brian’s response is concerned it worries me somewhat. There are not two groups of people but three, there are also people who are not nervous of the risks but prefer online. Liz Commins and I will go back to playing in Iceland, the USA and France, but we do not see the point in going out to a club on a cold winter’s evening if we can play online.
As far as Stewart’s response is concerned Bob did not suggest it would be allowed to play with a robot. Whether you play online or face-to-face there is quite a feeling against playing with robots, but I think that is a matter for the club generally, and nothing to do with the hybrid approach.
Make no mistake, if you do a hybrid approach there will be moans, but there are moans about everything that is not normal and that is not a good enough reason not to try them.
It is not a bad slam even if you replace the DK with the CK or the HK. If they lead the correct suit then you need the D finesse and reasonable breaks. But if they do not lead the correct suit you might make it even when the D finesse fails so I would want to be in it anyway.
I am surprised that you do not think you would reach it after Jacoby. 1S 2N 3N shows a strong NT and surely South will now bid the slam.
You have a reasonable 16 points (plus factors and minus factors so no reason to upgrade or downgrade) opposite a good 10 points. Whether it is a good game or not, the one thing that is certain is that everybody else will bid it. So the only excuse for staying out of it is if you are playing rather bridge when you are not comparing your score with anybody else!
My sympathies are all with North. South has no reason to downgrade to a weak 1N. But the North hand is very borderline as to whether to raise or not.
I think it should be alerted but I am not convinced that everybody will. So my advice to you is to alert but if an opponent builds it without an alert and you need to know it is safer to ask.
It does not make any difference. If it was partner alerting as suggested by your last post and he forgot that is misinformation because it should have been alerted. If he was not sure he should have alerted and told the opponents that he was not sure. Either way it is misinformation.
Just to clarify, North’s 2S is just a bid, not a “responder’s reverse”. A responder’s reverse is when partner opens and you bid two suits in such a way that partner can only return to the first one at the the three level. 1H 2C 2H 2S is a responder’s reverse, showing at least 11 points.
It really depends what 4D means. If it is a slam try then certainly pass is forcing. But if you play it as descriptive to help if they bid 5C then I do not think the pass is forcing. Nevertheless I would still bid on the way they did.
If you want to show an auction such as the above without the software making it look wrong put dashes in, such as:
W N E S
– – P 1N
Most players never bid again after opening 1N with partner passing. Nevertheless it is often reasonable to guess from the auction that partner must have some points and aggressive players do double sometimes after opening 1N. Traditionally it used to be a penalty double showing something like KQT9 in the opponent’s suit, but the modern style is for it to be takeout showing something like xx in the opponent’s suit. The main thing is to make sure you and your partner know which it is if it ever turns up!
I do get asked questions on psychic bidding and other bidding which is different from time to time. If you have any doubts about a hand you can always ask on my forum. But the basic rules are these:
A psyche is a call that is a deliberate gross misrepresentation of the hand held as compared to the agreements of the partnership. If this misleads partner as much as the opponents then with rare exceptions it is legal. Note the word deliberate: if the call is made by accident it is a misbid.
The way you learnt to bid is just one way and the fact that opponents bid differently from you does not make their bidding illegal or wrong.
It looks as though it should be adjusted. While the effect is similar, the actual details of the ruling differ dependent on whether it is online with self alerting (BBO) or online with partner alerting (some RealBridge games) or live with partner alerting. The easiest one to deal with is the first one.
With self alerting the 2D bid should have been explained before the bid was made and now West might easily pass 2D. So the director will adjust, quite probably to 2D making however many tricks it would.
It is actually a bit more complicated with partner alerting because now the director has to decide what their system actually is. If the system is that 2D is natural but North forgot then the failure to alert was correct and the result stands. If, as seems most likely, North-South do not really have an agreement then the correct explanation of 2D was “possibly natural, possibly transfer, not sure”. 🙂 If West was told this before his second call he might have decided to pass or he might have decided to double. In that case, giving East-West the benefit of the doubt, and assuming for the sake of this example 2D goes two off not vulnerable, I would probably adjust to
.. 40% of 2H=, NS +110
+ 60% of 2D-2, NS -100
